Celebrating the great Canadian game. Tracking the NHL, the Canadian teams and a lot more!

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Kelly fiasco continues to control NHLPA agenda

It's been a few weeks now since the midnight cabal of the NHLPA held the Star Chamber meeting that dismissed their executive director, but if they thought that time would diminish the controversy they were apparently sadly mistaken.

This weekend the debate took on a whole new direction with the revelation that it was an opinion from former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry that helped to shape the overnight dismissal session that saw Kelly removed from his position less than two years on the job.

..The fact that the NHLPA's decision to remove their Executive Director was based on McMurtry's discussion points has raised more than a few eyebrows, with many wondering if his opinion was as unbiased as one would hope for, considering his close ties to the pariah of the players association Eagleson.

Those developments of Saturday perhaps helped to frame the discussion for the NHLPA reps on Sunday who met in telephone conclave, to try and come to some kind of consensus on how to proceed next and in what direction.

Judging by some of the media reports though, that process still is apparently a work in progress with only a recitation of some very confusing items from the Sunday discussions to work with.

What does seem clear however is that Paul Kelly will be getting a negotiated settlement as his parting gift from the NHLPA, which instead of having to deal with more legal problems will somehow try to come to an arrangement on the remainder of Mr. Kelly's contract, Kelly has one year remaining paying him $1.5 million (all currency U.S.) and a $400,000 bonus. There will also be the matter of a two-year option to sort out.

All in all, the events of the last three days continue to leave the NHLPA with far more questions about the way its affairs are being handled, a situation which leaves the Players association once again under suspicion and tempting the fates of irrelevance with every passing day.

What clearly is needed is a General Meeting of all the player reps of the teams, the players of each team and their agents, there is a serious need to resolve this mess before it becomes any more embarrassing. One shudders at what the next revelation may be as an already unseemly mess gets uglier and uglier with each updated report.

Somewhere along the way, those that are supposed to be in charge seem to have forgotten that the mission isn't to build little Kingdoms inside the Association, but to best represent the players interests with the NHL owners, so far they've neglected the latter far too much.